Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @10:31PM
from the black-ice-and-white dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."

You're not alone in asking that question. Apparently 31,000+ scientists are holding the same doubts as you:
http://www.petitionproject.org/ [petitionproject.org]
but you know how it goes... the more you keep repeating something (or the louder you state it) the more inclined people will be to accept it.
Science has its staunch supporters who are just as closed minded over their beliefs as are the extremist in religion.

One question for the warmers reading. Can the theory of AGW be falsified?

Sure. If we keep emitting and the climate doesn't change, then it's falsified. Kind of like if how the theory that 4 cheeseburgers and a pack of cigarettes every day will kill -you- specifically can be falsified by -you- specifically eating 4 cheeseburgers and smoking a pack of cigarettes each day and not dying. Try it, let us know, the rest of us are foolishly following the religion of "Carcinogens and cholesterol will kill us specifically."

Well, maybe for 2009 to not be the hottest year in recorded history, or 2000-2009 to be the hottest decade in recorded history, for one.

Maybe not for a clear upward trend in average global temperature over the last 100 years, for another.

Stuff that was predicted well before it actually happened is not evidence to the contrary. If your restricted mental model of how climate works doesn't allow you to comprehend the mechanism that allows global warming to lead to more precipitation, then I'm not sure anyone here can help you. Weather != climate. Luckily the people actually working on the problem are way beyond that first-year course issue. It's unfortunate that there are so many people like yourself with voting powers getting in their way though.

So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?

Well it takes more than repeating easily debunked platitudes and specious arguments. Here's Jones' original quote...

Jones: "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

Sounds a bit more measured and reasonable than your biased histrionics. Yes?

So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?

If a ball falls down it is because of gravity.If it bounces back up it is because of gravity.

If comet flies into the solar system it is because of gravity.If the comet slingshots around jupiter and permanently exits the solar system it is because of gravity.

If the tide rises it is because of gravity.If the tide recedes it is because of gravity.

See how easy it is to gloss over the details and make something perfectly normal seem contradictory?

That's the kind of thing people have made up their mind and are only interested in promulgating their point of view do - not someone who is asking genuine questions.

When Phil Jones says there has been no warming for fifteen years, it doesn't mean anything. In fact, to date only the Moonies at the Wash. Times and Fox News consider his statement worthy of repeating. (He said it to the BBC, btw, not known as a bastion of Deniers.)

Except, that's not what he said:

BBC - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

PJ - Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

See now how that's nothing like the denial you spun it as? Or maybe you really didn't spin it, maybe you didn't even bother to go to first sources and just took the word of other spinmeisters - you know the ones who follow the mantra "if it bleeds, it leads!" Sucks not being able to apply critical thinking and google to do your own fact checking.

"Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?"

Jones: "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

And later,

"How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?"

Jones: "I'm 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."

I won't do the work for you, but for the first claim search theregister.co.uk for NASA and global warming. I don't remember the exact search, but it's not hard to find there. They have before and after graphs that NASA fudged, and both were available at the time from NASA. Dumb on NASA's part

For the second claim, if you missed the news last year, search for "climategate".

Actually we're about halfway through the interglacial period which begain ~10,000 years ago. The planet is actually quite cold for most of the time during these glacial periods except for a 15-20,000 year gap every 130,000 years (interglacial periods) and has been for ~5 million years. Most of Earth's history has indeed been warmer but there was also much higher CO2 levels in the air. Further, the poles don't really melt away completely unless the climate warms 5+ degrees C for prolonged periods of time. We've got ice cores going back the last 4 or 5 interglacial periods (600-800,000 years) which would be pretty hard to do if the poles had melted:)

I don't know about you unfortunately, but I expect to be able to have chemists tell me more about chemistry than a behavioural psychologist can - not everything in science is equal. An economist for instance may consider themselves a scientist. A petition is meaningless here - what would be meaningful is an argument convincing enough that climate scientists agree with it.People can say they have found a cure for AIDS, won the Falklands War by advocating biological warfare, won a Nobel Prize, been elected to the British House of Lords or all kinds of things but unless experts in those areas agree with them their opinion is meaningless. You have been conned by a very audacious trick of professional confidence tricksters - that of pretending that others are pulling a trick themselves. It is a high paying profession now to fly around the world pretending that scientists are freezing their arses of in Antarctica to fabricate data when instead they could be fabricating at home where it is warm.Believe the climate scientists, not the PR firms paid to tell you otherwise, and not people like Monckton and Plimer that say what sells instead of what is found.

Inertia that was originally provided by a force overcoming gravity, which converted kinetic energy into potential energy. The bouncing back up is due to elasticity. It slowing and coming back down is due to gravity.

When your "peers" appear to have been actively engaged in hiding their data from public scrutiny, actively engaged in quashing any dissenting papers from getting published (including threats to publishers), and have appeared to have outright lied about positions and movements of temp recording data, I'd say we need to ask "Who Watches the Watchers".

It makes absolutely no difference how scientists appear to have acted because their results can be objectively checked. If Greenpeace paid me to say that e=mc^2, it wouldn't change the correctness of the theory one bit.

If scientists falsified temperature data it would be trivially easy to check. The data is available from the national weather services to anyone willing to sign the agreements and pay the fees. Anyone can watch the watchers. Yet all we get are discussions of "appearances" and insinuations.

Now... this doesn't even address the insidious side effect of this behavior... that no new research in to theories which are counter to the current group think get funding.

There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. In fact, if you read up the thread you'll find a petition that claims to represent 31,000 working (in other words, funded) scientists who run counter to the "group think." Can't have it both ways.

Can global warming create more snow? I believe it can. Really, in a nutshell, global warming = more energy in the system. That's it. Personally I believe the planet is getting warmer. Note I said "Believe", not know.

Here's my issue. This issue has been politicized by people on both sides, although primarily the left from where I sit. It has been turned into a religion by people like Al Gore. There has been a lot of talk by idiot politicos who have made statements that no snow in 2005 was proof of AGW. Then this year the record snow is proof of AGW. Both statements are complete shit; a single season of extreme weather means fuck-all. There is proof of the MWP. There is not proof of the MWP being a global phenomenon, however, there is also no proof that it isn't. If AGW actually exists, then why the fucking with the data? Why the need to include non-reviewed and non-substantiated data in government reports? If the science is sound it should stand on it's own without augmentation.

You know who really pisses me off? Al "the debate is over" Gore. Al "we use 10 times the energy as the average family but buy carbon credits" Gore. Al "Fly around the planet in a privet jet but you need to drive a Prius at all time" Gore. Well, really? Fuck you Al. The science is not settled and you're a fucking hypocrite. AGW is a theory, just as relativity is a theory; there is a lot of evidence to support it, but it's still not complete. And I don't want to get started on the ponzi scheme that is carbon credits. Either producing excess CO2 is bad or it's not; buying someone else's allotment (that they probably weren't gong to use any way) is a crock. The excess energy you are using is still making more CO2 than necessary. Please explain why George Fucking Bush lives in a seriously eco-friendly house and you live in an energy wasting mansion with all the shit that comes out of your mouth?

When "scientists" and politicians say the science is settled about something as complex as global weather systems my bullshit meter pegs at eleven. The climate models need a lot more work. The accuracy of collected data is in some cases questionable. This doesn't mean that all the data is bad, but the theory cannot be presented as settled and complete at this point.

My over all point is that the politicians need to shut the hell up, because then know about as much about climate change as they do about finance: not very fucking much.

I think you have it backwards. Time series estimates tend to be more uncertain with shorter windows. The "also calculated" trends were from longer datasets with higher statistical significance (and surprise! They also indicate warming!) He's being asked to comment on a period where insufficient data exists for a statistically strong statement, and says the trend is still positive, albeit with less confidence.

So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming

Ya, no global warming since 1995, but in the last 15 years the island of Sagar has been losing ground to rising oceans.

So what? There are two effects to keep in mind here. First, apparently the island is being rapidly eroded away [springerlink.com]. That's a common process for islands exposed to ocean to experience. For example, it happens on the eastern coast of the US quite frequently [nps.gov]. Human activity probably has resulted in the loss of protective wetlands too (much as has occurred along the coast of Louisiana and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico). It says nothing about the sea level. Second, the island appears to be in a delta region. That often results in sinking of the land due to the weight of new river sediment.

According to Wikipedia, sea level has risen 20 cm in the past 120 years. While that is a significant amount, there's no way that it can explain the current problems with Sagar Island.

A small tip - calling someone an idiot from the comfort and security of your keyboard does little to advance your argument.

What made you think I wanted a rational debate? If I wanted that, I would have replied to someone who actually made sense.

And to save you some trouble - please don't bother me with all that peer review literature vs grey literature stuff.

How splendid. A pre-emptive strike that makes it impossible to actually debate anything. How does it feel to talk about nothing?

An issue as far reaching as AGW requires broader audience treatment.

The many eyeballs argument. And, as they found out in open source software, the many eyeballs argument only works if the eyeballs actually understand what they're looking at. An issue is not helped when willfully ignorant people start talking.

You know, you had a chance to actually demonstrate that you're taking the high road by providing some sort of evidence for your talking points. Unfortunately for you, I already know why you didn't: the IPCC reports never made the claims and data analysis that you say they did.

There's nothing wrong with points of view. There is a problem when people are actively lying to score points. And if you picked up your specific points from Monckton, well, then he was lying. And you ought to look for better sources. Or do you just blindly trust what they say?

The stuff in the register article received very little attention in the traditional media (make of that what you will) so I cannot find any more respectable sources on it but having a look around its seems legit (i.e. the accusation is real). What I don't get why he didn't the guy fire him (after all he was his supervisor - and he evaluated his results!) when he saw he was making junk science? Why only come out now with these accusations - more than 20 years after the events?

As for climate-gate - its not really good science, but hardly proof of global conspiracy some folk make it out to be.

The whole climate change debate has gotten so muddy with politics we have effectively poisoned any change of good solid science being implemented in policy - what ever that may be. As a good rule of thumb - trust the results from folk who spend more time doing science then doing interviews.

Increased CO2 will only increase plant growth where CO2 uptake is the limiting factor in the growth rate. In some places it probably is; maybe we'll get lots of kudzu. In most places, it's probably not.

Heat won't help if the plants aren't adapted to those conditions.

Some places may enjoy more water, but it depends on the place. If most of your summer water comes from winter snow melt and glaciers, but that even with greater snow fall the added heat means thinner snowpacks and receding glaciers, then you're still worse off.

If you live in a dry area and it gets drier, that's bad. Similarly, if you live in a damp area and it gets even wetter, that's not good for you. If where you live borders on inhospitable, and becomes inhospitable due to climate change, it's little consolation that some farmers on the other side of the world saw small improvements in crop yield, or that someplace that was inhospitable and uninhabited can now accommodate civilization.

Indeed, one of the somewhat disturbing threats from climate change is simply change itself. There is enormous cost in change. The cities and nations with huge investments in their ways of life need will need to reshuffle their established patterns of development and activities.

Of course serious damage to the marine food web and general chaos in natural environments from the Redwoods to the Rockies to the Everglades to the Arctic to equatorial Africa to island atolls is also pretty unpleasant.

Why would the net loss in volume more than double from 22 cu mi per year to 53 cu mi per year in recent years? Could perhaps the globe be not only warming, but warming at a rapidly increasing rate? Could this be why Antarctic ice is also melting at an increasing rate [nasa.gov]?

1/ the greenhouse effect is proven; without the Greenhouse-effect it would be nearly 20C colder on average, and CO2 is one of the gases responsible.2/ CO2 levels has changed dramatically since the industrial revolution, in fact we can calculate how much CO2 we dump into the atmosphere by looking at the amount of oil and gas sold.3/ because of (1) and (2), 'NOT AGW' should be proven, because no further warming would mean a strange cut-off point for the greenhouse effect of CO2, and that would mean we need an extraordinary explanation for 'NOT-AGW'.

So because SOME scientists aren't making their work transparent, all climate model forecasts are suspect?

My understanding is that it is extremely expensive to collect this data and that instead of collecting their own data many scientists reference the results from the paper that has been falsified. Since it's expensive to collect this data no one wants to share it. Perhaps it's because they don't want to get caught falsifying it too, who knows since no one can check.

So yes, any papers that base all their work from the original findings are irrelevant. I feel bad for the scientists who were duped by this and wasted time doing further research on it.

The IPCC are about 14 paid staff. The preparation and peer review of the reports is done by volunteers, and they include a lot of very highly respected scientists.
here [utoronto.ca] is a list of the contributors to the 2007 WG1 report. (That's the working group that you would get most climate scientists working on, because it is about the scientific aspects of climate change)... many of the other 80% would be working for the other working groups, which require expertise in development, disease, economics, engineering, and studies relevant to the subject areas of evaluating impacts and vulnerabilities, or costing and advising on amelioration techniques and technologies.

Notice how well cited these scientists studies are, especially considering that they volunteered their time to the IPCC rather than do their own work, which would better forward their careers. The top 500 generally have over 100 citations over their top 4 papers, and the top 200 look like they must be very renowned scientists, with hundreds of citations on their top papers.

Climate science is a broad subject that incorporates a number of fields. For instance meteorology, geology and physical oceanography among others. But the core climate scientists who write the GCMs are physicists who study radiative transfer and expand their knowledge base into those other fields to capture the information they offer. Physics is a very statistically oriented field.

"There has been an uptrend that is not significant" is more properly interpretable as "there has been no warming" than anything else. Anyone who understands anything about statistics understands this. If you don't, I can only presume it is because you don't understand statistics.

This is ridiculous. "There has been an uptrend that is not significant" can NEVER be interpreted as "there has been no warming". What it means is "There HAS been warming but there is a non-negligible probability that it could be an artifact of random noise and the error bounds on our predictions for the future based on the period include the case where temperatures do not continue to rise"

That's not what he's been saying at all.
""The science still holds up" though, he adds. A follow-up study2 verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant. "They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion," says Jones of his critics."
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100215/full/news.2010.71.html [nature.com]
"But Jones is adamant that this doesn't actually change the conclusion of the analysis. In a subsequent paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008, Jones verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant to the outcome."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/16/hacked-climate-science-emails-climate-change [guardian.co.uk]

Galileo again. He wasn't in the minority. The CHURCH knew that the earth was round (Aristotle in 380BC had calculated its diameter as a sphere, and he wasn't the first). What Galileo got done for was writing it in Italian where the plebes could read it, rather than Latin where the scholars would read it but knew that there was a "greater truth" in the bible.